What percentage of your audience is a Blog Skimmer?

Written by The Enrollify Team | 11/4/19 12:04 PM

ADS COMING TO WHATSAPP IN 2020: A new report on global messaging apps claims that WhatsApp is poised to introduce “Status”, WhatsApp’s take on Facebook’s “Stories”, in 2020. While WhatsApp is primarily used for 1-on-1 conversations, ads will only present on “Status” where users can share photos and information with their “address book” of contacts. Ads will not disrupt the 1-on-1 conversations that take place on the app. A present-day comparison to WhatsApp’s “Status” ads are Snapchat’s “Snap Ads”.

Why you should care: Not only is WhatsApp extremely popular (1.5 billion users), it’s also used by an incredibly diverse audience across 180 countries. For enrollment marketers looking to reach a more diverse population of prospective students or even market to international students, WhatsApp will provide yet another strong channel to do so in 2020.

HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR BLOG FOR BLOG SKIMMERS: According to Chartbeat, 55% of people read your blog posts for 15 seconds or less. To keep those “skimmers” engaged for even longer, utilize header tags (like H2 and H3 tags) strategically to create a logical, hierarchical flow to your blog. “Skimmers” should be able to understand the gist of your blog by reading titles and headers in your blog. Also, keep introduction paragraphs to 150 words or less. In it, explain to the reader exactly what they’ll get in return for reading your post. Lastly, trickle content offers throughout the blog, utilizing anchor CTAs (Call-to-Actions), inline CTAs, and end-of-blog offers that tie in your latest video, eBook, or guide to the blog’s theme.

Why you should care: If prospective students are skimming your blog, it often means that they can’t quickly find the answer to their question (even though the answer might actually be in your blog). Optimizing your blog with the above tips can help direct prospective students to the answers to their questions even quicker, which actually results in more time spent on the page to read the answers they’re after.

ANALYZE YOUR COMPETITORS' CONTENT TO WIN AT SEO: Taking a deep dive into the content that your competitors are publishing online can help you identify crucial gaps in keywords, topics, and content coverage. This leaves room for you to “fill in the gaps” of missing content about industry related topics. If a competitor isn’t promoting or writing content about a certain subject, this is a golden opportunity to become a thought leader on that topic, publish high quality content on the topic, and rank ahead of them in Google’s search results for that keyword. .

Why you should care: Consider performing a content audit on programs you consider to be your direct competitors. Do they offer prospective students strong, industry thought leadership related to the program offering in the form of a blog, eBooks, guides, or video? Uncovering content gaps can help give you direction for a new piece of educational content that answers prospective students’ questions first and has a greater chance to rank at the top of Google’s search results.

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